El Segundo, USA: Due to stronger-than-anticipated shipments of notebook computers in the first quarter of this year, industry analyst iSuppli Corp. upgraded its 2007 PC shipment forecast. The company now says that global PC shipments will rise to 264 million units in 2007, up 11.2% from 239 million in 2006. The previous forecast predicted a 10.7% growth.
“First-quarter notebook PC shipments were 3% higher than we had previously anticipated,” says Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms, for iSuppli. “There were concerns that the second-quarter release of Intel Corp.’s new Santa Rosa notebook microprocessor platform might cause buyers to delay purchases originally set for the first quarter. However, Santa Rosa did not have a significant negative effect on firstquarter shipments.”
The company also revised its forecast for Solid-State Drives (SSDs) in notebook PCs. It now predicts the penetration of SSDs in notebooks will reach 12% by the end of 2009. In contrast, penetration of hybrid hard drives (HHDs) in notebook PCs is expected to reach 35% by the end of 2009.
SSDs are intended as replacements for conventional hard disk drives (HDDs). They will use flash memory instead of traditional rotating media. HHDs employ flash memory in combination with HDDs to create a hybrid solution.
While SSDs and HHDs represent two different forms of flash data storage on PCs, other solutions are currently being introduced, too. Another approach to PC flash memory storage, Intel’s Robson, also called Turbo Memory, is expected to take off in 2007. According to the analysts, because any HDD can work with Turbo Memory, this solution will penetrate the market faster than HHDs.
The combination of SSDs, HHDs, Turbo Memory, and other solutions will propel flash memory’s penetration of notebook-PC data storage to nearly 60% by the fourth quarter of 2009, iSuppli predicts.